Professor Bai's research focuses on several frontiers of urban sustainability science and policy, including:
Understanding the structure, function and processes of urban social ecological system
Drivers and impacts of urbanisation, including the impact of landscape urbanisation on food production
Urban environmental evolution
Urban metabolism - urban energy, water, food, material flows and social economic determinants
Cities and climate change
Urban policy and governance
Urban resilience and cities as complex system
Low carbon, eco-city development
Sustainability experiments, system innovation, transition and transformation
Concept and method development for cross-case analysis
Regional development and environmental policy in China
Urban futures in the Anthropocene.